Now before you get all jealous, realize that I've spent about $1,184.58 in Adwords advertising to promote Amazon Associates and other affiliate program products that allow you to advertise them.

Update: I discovered I was linking to Amazon from Google Adwords the wrong way. If you advertise Amazon products via Google Adwords, make sure your URLs are formatted like this, for example, with your tag at the end:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ZHIZ50/pm-20

Not like this, for example:

I guess Google Adwords and/or Amazon doesn't like all those redirects.

EITHER WAY, MAKE SURE TO COMPARE YOUR ADWORDS CLICKS AGAINST YOUR AMAZON ASSOCIATES CLICKS (UNDER EITHER THE PRODUCT CLICKS ORDERED, OR PRODUCT CLICKS ITEMS NOT ORDERED IN YOUR AMAZON ASSOCIATES ACCOUNT EACH DAY TO ENSURE THE CLICK YOU'RE PAYING FOR ON ADWORDS ARE IN FACT BEING TRACKED IN AMAZON.)

Already I learned about things I was doing wrong, like bidding too high and for the wrong position -- and lots of other tips on "coverage" -- making sure you get loads of impressions.

And therefore more click-thrus...

And therefore hopefully more sales.

Combining what I learned in that book and over at James' Dominating Amazon website, 2009 will see me maximizing my affiliate earnings profit with minimal advertising costs spent.

(I'm getting more sales, learning to minimize my CPC, so I'll let you know how January 2009 closes out.)

But in the meantime, in the Spirit of Christmas and giving, I'm giving my blogging and pitching readers some tips that will hopefully help you increase your Amazon Associates sales that I've learned in the past three years or so:

Pitch Everything That Sits Right With Your Soul - The minute you hear something on TV that might be a hot product, look for it on Amazon and write about it. That's what I did the minute I heard Beyonce say that she lost 20 pounds on Oprah using that Master Cleanse diet.

Go Back and Delete the Stuff That Doesn't - I've pitched some TV shows and stuff (Amazon has Video on Demand shows to download) that just didn't let me sleep at night, knowing that kids (or even adults) would be watching sleazy stuff based on my recommendation. When my conscience won't let me forget it, I'll go back and delete the post, or alter it and send them to a better, more wholesome alternative. I've learned that I can't control what people buy once they get to Amazon thru my account -- but I can control what I pitch...

Be Honest - If you haven't tried the product, tell your readers. If you find something you think will work better, tell them that too and pitch it to them.

Go Back and Update The Post - Again and again, if you have to. I've updated that Beyonce Master Cleanse diet post so many times it's not funny. I even told readers of a better product, a book -- so I let them make the decision on what to buy.

Pitch Mispellings - Bless God for the Amazon Kindle, which many people don't know how to spell. Take advantage of that and pitch the wrong spellings of a product -- like Kindel, Kindel, Kindel!

Tell Your Readers When the Product Ships and When It's Available - The Amazon Kindles are looking at an 8 - 10 week ship date right now. But it might be less, I pray, because I can tell when the Kindles are being shipped, because Amazon adds the revenue to our accounts when the product ships. For that reason, I've made the effort to tell my readers of Kindle's shipping and in stock dates and availability by constantly updating that post with the info. It's paying off royally.

Act on Coupons and Hot Sales - When Oprah gave readers the $50 off coupon code of OPRAHWINFREY on her show -- I immediately wrote a post about it. It expired Nov. 1, 2008, and that immediacy coupled with Oprah's influence -- and God leading me on the longest fast ever and not checking into my account that week and devoting more time to Him instead and painting my house -- gave me the pleasant surprise of my Amazon Associates earnings' life when I logged in to see that around $3,500 in Kindle revenue came my way that month. Boy, it's really coming in handy now to pay Uncle Sam...

Keep it Interesting - Don't use the same old banners that every other Amazon Associate and their grandmother is using. Mix it up! I love to put these two great books on my websites, because they're a great ministry tool, and it gets my Amazon cookie on customers computers -- at least for 24 hours, that is. A two-fer!

So Use Difference Images and Formats......to get customers onto Amazon, and make sure your Amazon Associates ID is in the link that leads them there.

Pitch Individual Products......either thru Adwords (but study up and don't lose your shirt on advertising costs) or by blogging about them. People research individual products before they buy, so consider writing up reviews or a detailed post about a product -- especially if you own it and love it.

Consider Setting Up a Product Blog......dedicated to pitching products alone. That's what one of my blogs is becoming, but I pitched products willy nilly on my WatchFreeEpisodes.com for a while, just because the ranking is so good, and Google loves immediately ranking those posts. Sure, I lost some RSS readers, but I got fed up with working so hard at an entertainment blog without being able to use its potential for product selling as well.

Focus on the Customers Ready to Buy...with debit cards in hand. How do you find those people? Some people actually type "Buy Vizio TV", for example, into Google. (Use SEO Book's free online keyword tool -- Google it -- to find the buy people.) You can target those people thru Adwords campaigns. But I lost traffic targeting only "buy" keywords. Read both this guy's book on Dominating Amazon, it's worth the 7 bucks...) and definitely that Mastering Search Advertising book above to find so many more secrets to getting your bids rights and making sure your ads are being displayed often enough. Using that book, I discovered I was paying way too much by only bidding on position preference #1. It's a great book!

Post Fast and Often, and Quick and Long and Short - Because you never know which post is going to hit with customers and take off. One product's sales might surprise you. Log into your Amazon Associates account, and use the nice "link to this page" strip they've added at the top now to make quick links to post. Put larger images in your posts, or pull a quick product link code by hightlighting the image and link text and plopping it into the "WYSIWYG" mode of your blogging platform. Blogger doesn't always work well this way. Anyway, play around until you hit your stride -- it can work if you work it.

Check Google Trends List for Hot Products - And they will let you know if customers are typing in a misspelled version of the product.

Protect Your Amazon Associates Affiliates Links - If you're on WordPress, there are plugins that will let you protect your Amazon links from redirects. Otherwise, there are a number of programs and ways out there that protect your Amazon referral links from being redirected somewhere else...Question:

What method do you use to protect your Amazon Associates affiliate / referral program links from being redirected? Plugin? Cloaking software? Do tell...

Thanks, your advice will help out my blog Bargain Banners Banner Banter Blog where I discuss how small businesses can use vinyl banners to stay a float in these troubled economic times. Maybe I should join an affiliate program to try to increase my own income!

I did searched for any post you might have posted about your experiences switching to custom domain name, but I didn't find any. Thus the comment here.

You see, everything okay when I changed my Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, My Journey To Recovery and it published ok with or without the w w w.

But then I'm facing all sort of problems with my blog's template eg missing headers on both sidebars, blank spaces appeared out of nowhere, some links are missing even though the links did appeared on 'Edit Layout' mode.

I wondered is it the norm when publishing Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, your template will be in a mess like mine?

Do I have to change using Blog*Spot default template to fix the problem?

I'm sorry for the off-topic.

Anyway wishing a belated blessed Christmas to you and to your loved ones. And Happy new year too.

It's ok now. I finally figured it out why my template was in a mess? You see, I'm using Francisco's O2 Blogy template (a Wordpress theme turned to Blogger)and the images on the template had reached it limit Bandwidth making it disappear.

To fix that problem, I've to go through the whole xml codes on the template searching the images' url so that I can rehost it back on my own Googlepages.

Hopefully it will not happened again or I've to find another site to host all the images.

A question - where do you host your images, Paula?

I know what you meant about losing PR. I've been thinking about it too. This blog of mine, My Journey To Recovery used to be a PR5 on Blog*Spot, but now I've to start all over again. I guess it's ok coz I got my own faithful readers. Anyway, this is a personal blog, unlike my other making money online blogs, ;-)

Gee, looked like my comment has turned into another post. Better stop now before I go into my unstoppable mode.

Wow! thanks for sharing, this could really be of help to us who's still new and confused about the world of making money through the internet. You definitely deserve being part of the Top 50 Best Blogs of 2008. More power! Cheers!

Wow, that cheap huh? I didn't know it cost a mere US36 per annum to host your images on Photobucket? I'm following your foot-step then. At least I can sleep better without wondering on which blogs the images decided to play hide and seek with me, hehehe!

Say Paula, what do you think of My Journey To Recovery?

One more thing, if ever I needed your help with IM (Internet Marketing), may I have your permission to ask you a question or two about it? Like I said, I'm still learning about IM. In fact, I still got a long waaayyy to go.

Right here in Malaysia, we have got another 47 mins before celebrating 2009. I wish you peace, prosperity and much joy in 2009 and beyond.

It seems to me that our growing community of bloggers and enthusiastic newbies could really do with a hand from someone like yourself. Obviously you are a lady that is passionate about your chosen subject matter and how to make money online, affiliate marketing etc, this fact comes shining through from your easy to understand blog.

We are aiming our forum at beginners that want to find out how to make more money from the internet, please will you consider joining us and sharing your wisdom around even more?

It's a very positive posting environment and we aim to keep it that way, looking only for honest ways to create and maintain blogs whilst monetising them at the same time, amonst other endeavors.

It would be just absolutely lovely to see you!

May you enjoy a most properous 2009 and I'm wishing you all the very best.

First, grab the url of the larger Amazon image that you want to link to by right-clicking on that image in Amazon, and choose either "copy image location" or "properties" the copy the whole image Address URL (based on what browser you're using) and upload that to your blog post the way you normally upload images.

Next, make sure you're signed into Amazon Associates, and then on the particular product page, click "Link to this page" on the top left in order to get the code you want that contains your Amazon ID.

Okay, then under "Select Link Type" that Amazon gives you, select the last radio button that says "Text Only" and cut the link that they give you, for example, the link that the Kindle 2 page gives me is this:

So take that whole link with your amazon id tag in it, and replace that URL you just grabbed and replace that in the URL within quotes after the "a href" part in your image if it's already linked somewhere in the case of Blogger.

If it's not already linked somewhere, as in the case of Wordpress.org and others, then just highlight the entire img src code and link it to the URL that contains your Amazon associates ID.

I hope that makes sense.

Leave me a comment if it doesn't, and I'll put up a post with some screen prints and stuff.